YouTube secretly inflates your views | Creator News

Transcript

YouTube is trying once again to artificially inflate your view counts, and now you apparently need an AI to like comments. Meanwhile, Twitter is testing a Turbo Gift Button. Let’s talk about the Creator news of the week. A little bird told me that the YouTube Studio team is cooking something new. They want to transform the public view counter into a total reach metric. They want to start counting co-views on TV devices, which means they’re guessing how many people are sitting on the couch and multiplying views by an arbitrary number.

They also want to add Shorts remix views directly to your original video. The product team estimates that this will artificially inflate view counts across the platform by 50 to 70%, effectively devaluing long-form content. And we’ve already experienced this last year. Remember when YouTube redefined what a view means for Shorts? They set the bar so low that a quick swipe suddenly counted as a view, turning the metric into a glorified impression.

They even had to invent a new metric called “Engaged Views” just to track who actually stayed and watched. While view counts might have exploded on paper, did the market suddenly pay more? Absolutely not. Sponsors and agencies aren’t stupid. When platforms artificially increase the supply of views, the market simply lowers the price per thousand views. This artificial 70% inflation only means your views are worth less to a sponsor. We don’t need bloated total reach metrics; we need hard, reliable conversion data. What do you think about this?

Let me know in the comments below. By the way, speaking of comments, a new feature is being introduced that actively suggests comments for you to like because apparently, manually searching for good comments takes too long. That’s the definition of a luxury problem. If you’re getting so many comments on your videos that you generally struggle to find one you want to give a heart to, you’re definitely doing something right. I don’t think we need an algorithm to automate basic human community interactions, but share your thoughts with me.

And maybe you’ll get a heart that wasn’t suggested by YouTube. Instead of making community interactions redundant, let’s focus on real monetization issues like the next topic, which sounds like a quality-of-life improvement. If you’ve been following our channel for a while (and if you’re not subscribed yet, now is a good time), you might remember a video titled “Memberships are perfectly balanced,” where we addressed the problems with the rigid regional pricing of memberships.

In recent months, small changes have already been made to fix the worst inconsistencies, but now a better solution seems to be implemented. For April 2026, YouTube is introducing flexible pricing for channel memberships. You can finally adjust your prices for new members to the current exchange rate without disrupting or deleting existing tiers. Existing members can keep their old prices. I’m curious if this approach to dynamic pricing will actually lead to a higher conversion rate or even lower rates in problematic regions.

And while we’re on the topic of memberships: If you appreciate the research and exclusive insights we provide here every week, please consider supporting the channel through a $2.99 membership. Your support directly funds the hours of research needed to cut through platform PR. And if we build a solid member base, we’ll be able to create in-depth analyses on specific topics upon member request. Check out the join button below if you want to support our work.

Oh, and before we move on to other platform news, the vertical streaming currency YouTube Jewels is expanding its availability to Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand. Finally, let’s take a look at Twitch, where a Gift Turbo Button is currently being tested directly on user cards. This means you can buy a streamer an ad-free experience regardless of whether they’re subscribed to the channel or not. I did some research because my initial question was: Does this harm the streamer’s ad revenue? And the good news is: No, it doesn’t.

Just like YouTube Premium, Twitch Turbo Watchtime still pays out ad revenue to the creator even if the viewer doesn’t see an ad. I’ve linked the official documentation on Twitch Turbo in the description below if you want to read more about it. And that’s it for this week. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the proposed total reach inflation of long-form views. Will it help smaller creators appear bigger, or will it just confuse sponsors even more? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m Martin, bringing you the relevant creator news. See you next week!